


debt

by ladymedraut



Series: plantagenet university [1]
Category: 15th Century CE RPF, The Sunne in Splendour - Sharon Kay Penman
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, followed by coffee shops and feelings, frat basements and drunkenness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22765312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymedraut/pseuds/ladymedraut
Summary: "I owe you one."Or, the story of how Anne Neville met Richard York and decided she was actually quite fond of him when he wasn't passed out on her couch. Also in which Francis Lovell owes her several favors that she may soon be able to cash in on.
Relationships: Anne Neville Queen of England/Richard III of England, Isabel Neville/George Plantagenet Duke of Clarence
Series: plantagenet university [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1637776
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	debt

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome to the first of (probably several?) college au war of the roses fics that no one asked for. but apparently this is how i get rid of my writer's block when i'm working on other projects, so here we are...

She really, _really_ hated parties. Inconveniently, she somehow managed to forget this every time Isabel tried to drag her out. And every time she ended up standing in a corner, sipping on a cup of something that might be called beer if you held your breath and ignored everything your taste buds were screaming at you, watching her sister dance with George—well, ‘dancing’ was a loose term.

She also hated George, but that was another matter entirely.

If it hadn’t been snowing, she might have walked home and left Isabel with her boyfriend, but the drifts had been building up all day and she dreaded the sight awaiting her when she left the frat basement. She really didn’t feel like trudging halfway across campus through a foot of snow while wearing flats. Why hadn’t she just ignored Isabel’s fashion advice and worn boots like a sensible person?

“Hey, want another drink?” a sandy-haired boy said with a grin, trying to pass her another cup of questionable liquid.

"Fuck off, Francis,” she sighed, crumpling her empty cup and tossing it at his head.

“Are you okay? Do I need to go punch George?” The humor suddenly drained away from Francis’ face, and she had no doubt that he actually would punch George York in the basement of his own frat and deal with the consequences later if she asked him to do it. Francis Lovell was just that sort of friend who walked the line between extremely caring and excessively reckless.

“I’m fine. A little fed up with Isabel, but fine.”

“So are you just going to stand here against a wall all night and stew or are you going to have fun?” Francis held out his hand to her, and she let herself be pulled into the crowd of people dancing—again, ‘dancing’ probably wasn’t the best word for it, that implied far too much grace and control—in the middle of the room. Something about Francis’ smile was infectious, and soon she found herself laughing with him as they whirled around the basement. As long as she kept her eyes on Francis and away from Isabel and George making out in a corner, she was fine.

And then Francis stopped smiling.

“Oh god, sorry, did I step on your foot again?” She grimaced and started to apologize before she realized that Francis wasn’t looking at her, he was looking past her to where another boy was slumped against a wall, looking generally pathetic with his dark hair covering half of his face and a mostly empty bottle of beer in his hands.

“Sorry, I have to go deal with that.” Francis made his way out of the crowd of people, and she followed him partially out of curiosity, partially because she didn’t want to be left alone.

“Come on, Richard,” he said, prying the bottle out of his hands and draping the other boy’s arm around his shoulders. “We’re going home.”

“'M not drunk,” Richard slurred, barely managing to stagger his way to the stairs.

“Where does he live?” Anne tossed his other arm around her shoulders and helped Francis haul him up the stairs. “Also, who the hell is he?”

“Where’re we going?” Richard muttered.

Francis rolled his eyes and signaled to the brothers standing by the door that they had the situation under control. “He’s my scene partner in my acting class. He lives over by the dining hall. I had the feeling he was going to go out and do something stupid tonight. Damn, I hate it when I’m right.”

Richard was mumbling under his breath, something about his brothers that sounded none too pleasant. Anne contemplated just leaving him in a snowbank as she trudged down the snowy sidewalk, her flats completely soaked through. And then do what? Go back to partying with Isabel? Not likely. As much as she despised dragging a drunken mess through a blizzard as she destroyed her shoes and probably got frostbite on half her fingers, she was still glad that it had given her an excuse to leave the party.

“Thanks for helping me with this idiot,” Francis grunted as he keyed them into Richard’s dorm and dragged him down the hall, tracking snowy footprints down the carpeted floor. “Dickon, please tell me you have your keys.” Francis searched Richard’s pockets and found them empty. “Really? Dammit, Dickon, I don’t want to have to drag you up four flights of stairs to my room because no one had the sense to install a goddamn elevator in this building.”

Anne had been checking her phone while Francis looked for Richard’s keys. No messages from Isabel, as expected. “Take him to my place,” she said, shoving her phone back in her pocket and nudging Richard’s head off of her shoulder. “I’m right across the street, one of the singles on the first floor.”

“Oh my god, thank you. I totally owe you one. Or, like, several.”

They carried a mostly incoherent Richard through the snow and across the road to Anne’s room, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a snowplow, and unceremoniously dumped him on Anne’s bed. He immediately curled up and seemed about to drift off to sleep when Francis propped him up and shoved a glass of water under his nose.

“Drink.”

Francis only managed to get a few sips of water into him before Richard’s eyes bulged and Francis hurriedly helped him into the bathroom. Anne listened to the sound of him retching into her toilet with mixed pity and disgust. The things she did for Francis. Contrary to popular belief, they weren’t together—and weren’t likely to ever be—but they had been best friends since they met during freshman orientation.

She was setting out a blanket and some pillows on her couch when the boys made it back from the bathroom. Francis managed to get Richard to drink a few small glasses of water before leading him over to the couch and tossing a blanket over him.

“Get some sleep, idiot, and be thankful you don’t have rehearsal tomorrow morning.”

Richard mumbled something that might have been an apology and immediately closed his eyes.

Anne pulled a pack of bagel bites out of her mini fridge and ran down to the common room to heat them up. A few minutes later, she dumped them on a plate and unceremoniously plopped it down on the bed where she and Francis were sitting with their backs against the wall, watching Richard snore on the couch.

“The finest college gourmet,” she drawled as Francis picked one up and proceeded to burn his mouth. “Careful, they’re hot.”

“Do I look like I give a shit? It’s food. You’re a godsend, Anne Neville.”

She snatched the plate out of his reach. “Come on, Francis, you owe me a story. Complete with some nice gossip, I imagine. Who’s the guy on my couch, and why was he blackout drunk in the Upsilon Kappa basement?”

“He’s my scene partner, Richard York—”

Anne almost choked on her bagel bite. “York?! As in George York?!”

“Yeah, he’s George’s little brother. Not nearly as much of an asshole, though,” he added hurriedly as Anne shifted on the bed, debating tossing him out of her room and back into the cold purely out of spite. “Actually, he’s barely an asshole at all.”

“Are you sure he’s George’s brother? George could drink him under the table in, like, two minutes.”

“Pretty sure, yeah. Also pretty sure George is the reason why he’s drunk on your couch.”

“So George is miserable to everyone, then?” Anne felt a sudden surge of pity for the dark-haired boy on the other side of the room. She couldn’t stand George York solely in the context of being her sister’s boyfriend, she couldn’t imagine actually being sentenced to live with him.

“Yeah. They had an argument about something this morning, but Dickon wouldn’t tell me what it was. I just know he's been off all day.”

“Oh. Well, he can stay the night. You can too if you don’t feel like walking all the way back up to your room.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got bio lab tomorrow morning. I should probably get going.” Francis shoved another bagel bite in his mouth and grabbed his coat. “Dickon should sleep through the night, but text me if he needs help. I owe you one.”

Anne stifled a yawn and gave Francis a hug as he headed out the door. “I’ll text you when he wakes up. I’ll make sure he knows he owes you too.”

“You’re the best,” Francis smiled, but Anne was already heading back to bed, and she was asleep by the time he closed the door.

* * *

Richard awoke sometime the next morning with a dull headache and no memory of how he had found his way into a room that was definitely not his own. The smell of coffee drifted over from across the room, where a girl in a baggy sweatshirt was sitting cross-legged on the bed, typing on her laptop and sipping a mug of coffee.

He had a moment of panic before he realized that he was fully clothed and she wasn’t looking at him like they had drunkenly hooked up the night before. In fact, she hardly seemed to notice him at all.

“Um, hey,” he said, propping himself up on the couch and waiting for the world to stop spinning before sitting up the rest of the way.

“Oh! You’re awake!” The girl jumped, almost spilling her coffee. “I helped Francis get you home last night, but then you didn’t have your key on you and Francis lives on like the seventeenth bazillion floor, so I said you could stay here for the night.”

“Thanks.” Richard blushed. Great. Francis had had to take care of him last night. He’d sworn he wasn’t going to do anything that stupid. And now here he was in this girl’s room, and she seemed fairly nice—oh god, what had he done last night? “I’m Richard, by the way.”

“I’m Anne.”

“Have I met you before? You look kind of familiar.”

She rolled her eyes. “Turns out my sister, Isabel, is dating your brother.”

“Wow, she’s got terrible taste in men—sorry, I didn’t mean to insult your sister, George can just be kind of—”

“An asshole sometimes? I know.”

Richard laughed, even though the noise hurt his head. “Yeah. Anyway, I should probably go and leave you in peace, but thanks for letting me stay the night.”

“No problem. See you around.”

Richard rose to his feet and beat as hasty a retreat as he could, reaching for his phone as soon as the door closed behind him. _What happened last night?_ he texted Francis. Anne hadn’t said anything, but it was too much to hope that he hadn’t made a complete fool of himself.

_Heyyy you’re alive,_ Francis wrote back. _Anne and I dragged you out of Up Kap before you did something dumb. You’re welcome._

_She’s Isabel’s sister?_

_Yeah, she’s cool though. Don’t worry, she won’t tell George._

By that time, Richard had made it to the dining hall and was slumped over a plate of eggs and partially-edible looking hash browns, debating whether or not to send his next text to Francis. He closed his eyes and hit send.

_Do you have her number? Didn’t get a chance to thank her properly._

_Lol yeah._ Francis sent him her contact info.

_Thx._

He really shouldn’t text the girl whose room he had crashed in while he was blackout drunk trying to forget what his brother had said to him. That was definitely a recipe for disaster. Besides, she probably wanted nothing to do with anyone related to George York.

But Richard started typing anyway. Maybe he was still slightly drunk.

_Hey it’s Richard, the drunken fool on your couch last night. Can I get you coffee or something sometime? As a thank you?_

His phone was ominously silent for a long time. He probably shouldn’t have texted her. When it finally buzzed, he ignored it for a few minutes, trying to summon up the courage to look at it.

_Haha sure,_ she had written. _The Rose and Quill?_

_Tomorrow after morning classes?_

_Sure, see you there._

Richard started at the screen for a long minute, waiting for the conversation to disappear and retreat back to his imagination. But the words stayed put. Terrible idea or not, he was getting coffee with Anne Neville tomorrow. 

* * *

He beat her to the Rose and Quill. He was hunched over a stack of papers at one of the window tables, shaggy dark hair hiding most of his face, a mug of tea half-forgotten by his hand. She couldn't help but smile when she saw him. 

"You doing alright?" she asked, pulling off her hat and gloves and slipping into the seat across from him. 

"Yeah, I'm-I'm fine." She got the sense from his stammered response and startled look that that wasn't a question frequently posed to him. "So, uh, coffee? Tea? Hot cider?"

"A latte would be wonderful."

He ordered at the counter and brought back a steaming blue mug, placing it on the table in front of her with what she almost thought could be a smile. 

"So do you want to hold George and I'll punch him, or shall I hold George and you punch him?" Richard almost spat out the sip of his tea he had taken, and Anne was rewarded by a slight uplifting of the other side of his mouth. 

"What if we got Francis to hold him and we both punched him?"

Anne took a long sip of her latte and grinned. "I like the way you think." It shouldn't have been all that surprising, that she found herself liking the boy across the table from her. She trusted Francis' judgement in almost all things except his choice in pizza toppings, so if he was friends with Richard, the odds were high that she would be too. "What are you working on there?"

"Oh! This." Richard glanced down at the pages of scrawled writing that took up most of the table as though just noticing them. "I'm working on a stage adaptation of _Ipomedon_. Do you-do you want to read some of it? I could use some feedback that's not just Anthony Woodville rolling his eyes."

They spent the better part of the next hour discussing medieval romances and Anglo-Norman translations, studiously avoiding any and all mention of George York, until Richard's alarm for his directing class went off on his phone and he started wildly shoving papers back into his bag. "Sorry, I have to run. See you around?"

"Francis and I are getting dinner tomorrow if you want to join."

His hand froze on the buckles of his bag. "I'd love to. Text me where you're going?"

"Will do. Have fun being directed on directing." And then he was gone, and Anne found herself sitting alone at a table with a latte that had long since gone cold. She pulled out her phone and stared at it for a long moment, debating, before finding Francis' number.

_Francis,_ she texted, watching Richard sprint through the snow toward the performing arts center. _Francis, I'm calling in that favor._

_oh?_

_I would like one (1) wingman tomorrow please._


End file.
